Hewlett-Packard is rarely out of the news and not always for the right reasons. This week’s rather poor results from the company were overshadowed by complaints against the former management of Autonomy. HP alleges they misrepresented the company accounts, with the result that the $10 billion it paid for Autonomy was too high.

Autonomy founder Mike Lynch, who left HP in May, denies any such thing, but the case looks set to go legal. It’s one more trial for HP CEO Meg Whitman (pictured) who has been in post at Hewlett-Packard since February, following a series of unpopular leaders.

Look on the bright side of HP

The Autonomy acquisition is not the first to raise eyebrows – in recent years, the purchase of Palm, EDS and (back in the day) Compaq have all raised eyebrows, as some said HP either paid well above the odds, or failed to integrate its purchases.

But the story of Hewlett-Packard really is not all doom and gloom. Since it first emerged from a Silicon Valley garage, it has been an engineering-led company with a corporate philosophy that its staff genuinely believe in.

The company led the minicomputer revolution, and has been a PC leader, while it pioneered techniques along the way including reduced instruction set computing (RISC), cloud computing and object orientation.

We have a quiz for you, that should please jaundiced and idealistic HP followers alike. No spoilers – dive in and show how well you know HP, the tech wizard…